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Dehydrated Sweet Potato Chips

I’ve been having more adventures with the dehydrator recently, and wanted to try to make something to take care of those salty crunchy cravings. These satisfied about half of that desire :-) but turned out very fulfilling in their own way.

I also have a mandolin that I’m not too experienced with. Take note: if you’re thinking about getting or using a mandolin, make sure you get those thick cut-resistant gloves that are shown in that section of “people who bought this also bought” items. They are not just a suggestion – they are a necessity with a mandolin!

A few years ago, a friend was making raw butternut squash ravioli, and she nearly lost a finger in the process. And she is a great chef. But when I got a mandolin, I thought, “How hard can it be? You just move the vegetable back and forth to slice it… no problem”. Ha! Once you get into the rhythm of moving the veggie back and forth, it’s so easy to not watch carefully… and suddenly your finger is where that veggie used to be…… then look out. I won’t go into more details here, but whatever you can imagine…. happens :-(

So this time, my experiment was to make some sweet potato chips – salty, crunchy and still good for you. I experimented with flat chips, and crinkle cuts… and then when my finger met the mandolin, I switched to a knife and made some more rounds that way.

I very lightly sprayed them with oil to hold the salt, and put a nice layer of coarse ground pink salt on them, and put them in a single layer on the dehydrator trays. I dehydrated them at about 125 for 2 hours, then reduced the temperature to 105 overnight.

If you don’t have a dehydrator, you can put them in the oven on the lowest setting and crack the door.

When I checked them in the morning, they looked dry, and seemed somewhat crunchy on the outside, especially the thinner ones, so I took them out. Later on, I discovered that they weren’t really crunchy, they were just dry on the outside, but that turned out ok. In the end, they were dry and salty on the outside, but still chewy. They actually reminded me of the consistency of dried mango – while the flavor was quite different and they were salty instead of sweet, they had that nice chewy texture and were quite satisfying in their own way.

It’s definitely fun to experiment with dehydrating, either in a dehydrator or at a low oven temperature ~ the possibilities are endless!

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One thought on “Dehydrated Sweet Potato Chips”

The gloves _are_ essential, I absolutely agree. My mandolin comes with a tool to hold the veggies, some kind of a cart for the veggie ends to drive over the blade, yet I still want that glove.
With sweet potato chips I like to cut them into the finest slices, put them in a plastic bag, together with some oil and salt, close the bag tightly and swirl it around and to the sides vigorously until all is covered evenly. Then I put the slices on the dehydrator trays just randomly, they can overlap or form small heaps. Nothing of this matters, and it saves a lot of time, because in the end they never turn out shaped evenly anyway and they can be easily seperated.
If they would not turn out crispy, You have to put more oil.
They should be stored airtight, yet after 3-4 days they lose their crisp.